


That Feeling, Love

by TomorrowTakesForever



Category: NU'EST
Genre: All kinds of robots, Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Angst, Artificial Intelligence, Endgame Minron, Established Jron, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Outer Space, explicit sexual content in future chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:34:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26171263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TomorrowTakesForever/pseuds/TomorrowTakesForever
Summary: “The problem of how to design a computer program that performs at human levels of competence, intelligence, and sentience in full complexity remains open for the whole world.” Kim Jonghyun, revolutionizer of the automaton world smiled at the camera recording him and nodded. “Until the whole world meets Minhyun.”Minhyun was the perfect model.Or at least on the surface.
Relationships: Hwang Minhyun/Aaron Kwak | Aron, Kim Jonghyun | JR/Aaron Kwak | Aron
Comments: 7
Kudos: 35
Collections: Nu'fics x The Parallel





	1. What does it mean to be human?

**Author's Note:**

> This story is my literal child. It took me several months to finish, and even though I'm only posting the first chapter, I do promise it is complete and will be updated as soon as I have the time to edit around 60K words. I want to take the time to mention that you should definitely read the tags; sub-themes like sex will become very graphic in future chapters, so please take it into consideration.
> 
> The theme is also beyond AI/Cyberpunk. It’s about how a robot could potentially become more humane than the real human in the story. With this thought in mind, enjoy reading. Hopefully as much as I enjoyed writing every sentence.
> 
> And before I stop with long intro notes, absolutely [CHECK THIS OUT](https://www.pinterest.com/Exoxotics/minron/) before reading! I made a whole board including pictures to help you imagine the settings and visuals in the story. Enjoy it, please!

_“I have certainly not created a machine.”_

_And even though his voice was pre-recorded in a device that barely concealed his fear, rather unthinkable, he sounded like a madman in his last days before a designated annihilation._

_“No, I have created life.”_

—

Aaron tilted his head to the right, swayed by the exceeding fascination he had attempted to keep inconspicuous for nearly two years. 

Despite Jonghyun spending more time in the laboratory than he did upstairs for the last four months, Aaron always burst with enthusiasm when he watched his partner type relentlessly into his computer. He was very close to victory, essentially finished his _“most important project yet,”_ as he called it. 

Aaron barely had any understanding of what or how he did it. The only thing he was completely positive about was that Kim Jonghyun was the most knowledgeable human in the entire universe—in Alluvion and Polarion and all the thousand habited planets in the arcs of eternal outer space—, and that he’d reconstituted the world of cybernetics, robotics, and artificial intelligence.

The curiosity in his entire self had him focus his gaze on the fabricated limbs sprawled on the metallic surface of the laboratory’s table. His eyes examined the lifeless, naked body closely. There was a growing urge to feel the synthetic skin against his own fingertips. He’d touched him hundreds of times before; Jonghyun always allowed him to help with details and Aaron marveled at the softness that somehow reminded him of Jonghyun’s bare skin. The wide shoulders, the pale skin, and the intricate details like the marks and lines in his palms and fingers.

If he'd learned anything from Jonghyun (which was rather _plenty_ ), it was that whether it was flesh and bone or whether it was metal and wires it did not matter to him at all. Biological or not, Jonghyun had already picked a name for the android lying on the metallic table two years ago when he first began coding and working on his operative system. He was going to allow him to learn as a child learned from their parents and from their mistakes because the android right across from him was like his child. 

A customized and handwrought _child_ who was rather an adult and not an infant. One made of screws, bolts, metal, and artificial skin and intelligence. He didn’t have a natural brain, but why would it matter to him when Jonghyun’s brain alone was enough? Enough for humanity, even. 

Soon, he'd be running on electrical pulses and a database to process information correctly; Aaron felt impatient already.

His program hadn’t been finished just yet, but its completion was closer than ever. Everyday Jonghyun exerted himself to reach goals humanity hadn’t thought were possible a decade ago, but now that he was within striking distance of finishing his most important creation, he barely had any excuses to rest when he could be working.

Jonghyun abruptly got up from the swivel chair in front of his massive computer screen, waiting for the finished scans of the robot’s AI to successfully load into the program. As he turned to check on the lifeless android, he belatedly noticed Aaron had been inside the room with him too. Aaron had been so quiet and Jonghyun so concentrated that he’d not realized he was with him in the first place.

He walked to him and rested one of his palms against Aaron’s smooth cheekbone in complete silence. He leaned into the touch for a few seconds and watched his lips closely when he finally spoke to him in a low voice. 

“Would you like to help with Minhyun’s motion tests today?” He dropped his hand from Aaron’s face and circled the table until his hands were settling on the inert arms of the automaton’s body instead. Aaron nodded with unexplainable devotion. “Alright. Feed me an electric current.” 

The electricity currents flowed through all of the limbs to make sure that they worked correctly and naturally as if it were a real human body. The fingers started bending and loosening; Aaron watched and wondered if the android would be capable of learning an instrument quickly like any other android with a command or slowly like a child. Next came the elbows and the knees with a bit of Jonghyun’s support, who held Minhyun in place to make sure he didn’t start twitching with a violent current.

Yet Aaron’s personal favorite body part was Minhyun’s face. Jonghyun had made the male very attractive but he hadn’t ever pointed it out because it didn’t feel right for some reason. Still, he was beautiful in a captivating and youthful way. Even after all the countless times he’d seen the functioning tests, it was still a little bit strange to see his eyes open and his lips pull into a smile and force movements that somehow looked too humane. He couldn’t wait until the AI was loaded into Minhyun’s internal drive to see him in his physical chest, long legs, and pretty face instead of only listening to his soothing voice coming from Jonghyun's computer speakers. After all, they only ever marveled at the smooth voice Jonghyun had created and given to him upon a lot of alterations and adjustments, but he and his program were still stuck inside a computer. 

Not for much longer, though. 

“Another one,” Jonghyun said, looking up from the body and noticing Aaron’s distraction, “And a bit stronger this time.” 

The fingers moved again without delay. The more he increased the current, the more the nerve and muscle reactions seemed to tense up. His fingers gave the allusion that he was gripping into something very tightly. Jonghyun calmly looked for something in the laboratory and settled with an empty can of grape soda, handing it to him and not even going as far as to flinch when the excessive force of the android had him crushing the can with one single squeeze. 

Jonghyun smiled in self-satisfaction. Very soon, the world of cybernetics would change significantly and because of _him_. He, the creator of an android model as human as possible. A model that could _feel_ emotions and think on its own; independent and perfect and unique and _his_.

“That’s enough. Thank you.” He said, pleased. There was a second of silence before he returned to the desktop and checked the screen of his computer, sitting back down on his chair. Aaron followed quietly behind and sat on the metal stool close to Jonghyun, raising both eyebrows when he realized that the data had almost loaded completely. The computer screen displayed a blue bar nearly done copying Minhyun’s AI and that alone made Aaron sit on the edge of his seat and watch intently.

Jonghyun hummed to himself and looked even more impatient. Since the scan was nearly done, he turned back to face the keyboard and located the files quickly, deciding to check on Minhyun to let him know the good news. 

“Hello Minhyun,” Jonghyun said in a friendly tone when the program was logged in and executed on his computer after a couple of seconds. 

“Hello Jonghyun,” the computer replied back. Jonghyun acknowledged positively to himself, glad that his voice recognition was working correctly. 

Minhyun had only ever talked to him and Aaron though, meaning he only had two voices to get used to. It hadn’t been a problem to recognize them exactly; he’d talked with them from the computer speakers for a year and a half now and the conversations carried out differently depending on who he was dealing with. While Jonghyun liked explaining to him about the process in which he was being built and knowledge on all the different sciences, Aaron liked telling him stories and describing how things looked to him. He lacked words sometimes, so he only laughed and changed the subject to something else on second thought.

“Minhyun!” Aaron jumped up from his seat and smiled at Jonghyun in delight.

“Hi, Aaron,” It made him unknowingly laugh to himself when he could hear the smile in Minhyun’s voice. After doing today’s mobility tests, Aaron could very easily picture the android’s lips pulling up at the corners. 

“I have some good news,” Jonghyun said with a happy voice, “I’ll probably be finished with your last check-ups by tomorrow morning.” When no response came from neither Aaron nor Minhyun, he spoke again. “Do you know what that means?”

“Does that mean I… I can be out there? With you?”

“Yes,” He typed some notes onto his computer and added with a clear voice. “You will finally see us and yourself. Isn’t that exciting?” 

“Yes!” Minhyun laughed, Jonghyun laughed back and Aaron laughed last. Aaron smiled so brilliantly at Jonghyun that the relief in his face looked more evident as he thought about his soon-to-be biggest success.

“I’ll put you on sleep mode,” Jonghyun announced because Minhyun was well-aware of when he was turned on and off, so he always made sure that he was informed before putting him to sleep. Minhyun understood and stored these moments in his secondary memory. “When you’re up again, you might be in your body already. It’ll be a foreign sensation, so I need you to tell me if something in the software or hardware malfunctions, yes?”

“Okay,” Minhyun replied. “Good night.”

Jonghyun nodded and hummed, “Sleep well.”

He looked over at the corner of the laboratory and realized that it was fifteen minutes until eleven in the night and he almost gasped out loud at the realization. “God. It’s… _way_ too late, Aaron. You need to sleep.”

He rubbed one eye and shrugged. “I can stay up with you tonight. I’m really not that tired.”

Jonghyun smiled at him but it looked a little affronted upon a better observation. His shoes made a quiet thumping sound when he walked and held him in his hands warmly. He lovingly wrapped his arms around his torso and breathed on his neck; it had Aaron smiling. “I would absolutely love that, but you need a good rest.” Aaron laughed quietly against his cheek and Jonghyun kissed his lips with barely any energy left. “I promise to wake you up when I’m done with Minhyun’s scans. We’ll see him wake up together.”

He looked delighted upon the suggestion, “What should we do when he wakes up?” 

“Say hello,” He joked.

Aaron took his hands in his, entwining their fingers together tightly and smiling. “Okay, let’s think about it tomorrow morning.”

His lover helped him upstairs whilst tickling his sides to make sure he didn’t actually fall asleep on him, laughing when Aaron outwardly asked him to carry him to their bedroom because he refused to walk up the stairs himself.

Once Aaron was successfully wrapped in between the grey bed covers, he called out Jonghyun’s name before it could hit eleven and he was knocked for good. “I’m so proud of you, Jonghyun. I… I can’t even explain it with words but I’m very proud of you, that’s all.”

“You helped me too. We did this together.” He caressed and brushed Aaron’s hair out of his eyes, looking at his lips. 

Aaron laughed weakly and his head hit the pillows heavily. “Minhyun…” He smiled tenderly, “I can't wait to meet him.”

—

Eight years ago, Jonghyun moved out of Alluvion when his contract with _CyberArk Automatons_ expired. He bought a three-floored shuttle in Polarion, took Aaron with him, and never looked back.

Alluvion hadn't always been called “ _Alluvion_ ”, and life in Polarion hadn't been much of a possibility until fifteen years ago either. Instead, Alluvion used to be known as “Earth", and flying to outer space had been seen as one of humanity's biggest achievements of all time. There had been a time when the ocean washed out and wiped major cities and islands on Earth, but even with the life-threatening, non-stop downpour, it came to a point where the inundations formed a new land and granted life. The new era brought humans to name Earth after the privilege of this new land given by the ocean’s deposition.

When Kim Jonghyun was born, life had been completely different from past human experiences and accomplishments. He learned about mankind and its extensive history at school, but flying to the moon nowadays was possible and commonly done on the weekends by the higher society of Alluvion. Alluvion was a breathtaking paradise for the sightseer more than ever in its history, with glittering towers of light and extraordinary automation and machine industrialization everywhere he looked. Machine or human, it didn’t matter anymore.

He had still been a very young child when the first neon headlines made it into gigantic holographic screens all over his city in _Hanam_ and claimed that _“humanity had reached the sky”._ Jonghyun was barely an elementary student when he traveled into the stratosphere on an exhibition trip, where the sky turned deep purple and the stars came out and the misty earth below looked like a concave bowl. It had taken him seconds to decide that he’d someday move to the sky if he ever had the chance, and when aircrafts and buildings were built purposely high everywhere in Alluvion, he convinced himself that he would live on the top of a skyscraper or a space shuttle when he was older.

And as if it were destiny, the newly fit-for-human habitation zone became known as _Polarion_ exactly when Jonghyun turned fifteen. After six years of tests and rumors to test the achievability to live somewhere else besides Alluvion, it turned out to be true. A new habitable place high enough in the skies and high enough for the clouds under to serve as the finest tapestry that very clearly separated two sorts of realities. The rich from the poor. 

Moving to Polarion was the best excuse for the filthy, money-loaded families and clans’ who did not desire to live in Alluvion with the lower and middle-class people easily roaming in the streets. It was the perfect place for those who didn’t want to be disturbed by the ones who couldn’t afford a shuttle or a superstructure skyscraper above everyone else. And despite most of the cities in Alluvion glowing with technology, beautiful buildings, and even real, crashing _oceans_ , living in Polarion was still dreamed about by many people. Perhaps because it made it physically impossible to see the _unusual_ yet _existing_ poverty or the commonality where some people lived. 

But the wilted, discolored places hadn't really mattered enough to those who were lucky enough, as humans and androids mostly lived in those places where life was good and sporadic. Even if they could barely live comfortably, men and women seemed to love the virtual reality pubs and synthetic skin company that Alluvion offered. Anywhere where the buildings were tall and the streets were crowded. 

Yet Jonghyun hated it there. 

He was one of those aspiring teenagers who could have only dreamed about living in Polarion at the time. Not because of a superiority complex within him, but rather because he disliked many aspects of Alluvion and the people living in it.

That had also been the period in which Jonghyun no longer built motherboards and hard-drives from scratch but also learned how to engineer simple software with much effort despite his struggling reality of affording a decent computer to dabble with codes. (He self-taught himself for a few years before he got the chance of his life.)

Jonghyun had only been seventeen when he saw the media cover Choi Mingi and his active seeking of potential virtuosos for _CyberArk Automatons:_ the most successful, dominant, and advanced cyborg corporation in existence. He hadn’t been able to stop himself from checking the files out and signing up for an interview to attempt for a spot in the internship; an involvement for future cybernetic and software engineers for the very same company. 

Whenever he thought back to it, either with his naked back in the blue bed sheets or the warm water running down his legs in the shower at home, it felt like a fever dream that he kept living recurrently for over six years. He always recalled the pair of pants he wore the day of his trial because he’d been stared at when he entered the exam room, young and easily intimidated by anyone who looked in a higher position than him–which had been pretty much everyone in the room. 

The white tiles of the floor had been very obviously polished that day, perhaps every day, and the smell of lavandin clogged his nose. He watched everything closely as if that was the first and last chance he would get to enter such an establishment, which he convincingly thought considering he was too young and too ambitious. Yet he was in complete awe from the way in which the people inside the building dressed to the way the furniture looked; highly expensive and exclusive. But what caught his attention the most was the way in which the robots inside the room could’ve easily fooled anyone into believing they were actual humans because of their appearance.

Nevertheless, besides their realistic appearance, androids had been quite undemanding and simple once. Despite CyberArk Automatons being the cyborg-production pioneers in Alluvion after being the _first_ corporation to ever create all the models of working robots available in the market, most of them were as basic and illiterate as _apes_. It all had a beginning; some of their androids were still very clumsy and beta versions for _decades_ worth of hard work.

There was a male android prototype doing a rather defectless work at sweeping the entrance near the sliding glass doors, but Jonghyun was well-aware that if he tried to speak to that specific robot, it wouldn’t be able to recognize speech nor repeat it. They wore blue collars, and those were used to easily identify labor bots who didn’t have language implemented in their programs. Only used for basic tasks rather than those with the gold collars, who spoke and had a much more advanced software.

He was watching the android closely until a woman’s smooth voice interrupted his thoughts. Jonghyun looked up and realized that she was talking to him.

“Hello,” She said when Jonghyun awkwardly greeted her. “Can I help you?”

Jonghyun hadn’t been too nervous before, but he showed her the documents in his hands as if to prove he wasn't intruding on the property and had a reason to be there. The woman surprisingly turned out to be a cyborg as well, making it clear when she scanned the file with her eyes alone and stopped momentarily to process it. His eyes then shifted to the striking gold collar hidden under her blazer.

“Choi’s internships are meant to be on floor fifty-five. Follow the blue lines to the elevator and it’ll lift you to your destination.” Her gaze looked false even though she looked directly into his eyes. Jonghyun still thanked her and shakily made his way further inside.

When he reached the room where the evaluations would take place, Jonghyun noticed that everyone was old enough to be his father or mother. He thumbed the small hole in his jeans and watched as people were called inside and left the room way too quickly. Most of them carried scowls in their rejected faces and Jonghyun wondered if applying there had been a terrible idea.

That afternoon seemed eternal, but when a female android called his full name and asked him to go in, Jonghyun certainly felt like some courageous young man had taken control of his body and helped him step a foot inside Choi’s office. There were three black screens inside the room and the computer’s holographic screen in front of Choi showed Jonghyun’s self-written profile as he walked further inside and saw him for the first time in person. Choi Minki was a prodigy; most would shake at the sight of him and young Kim Jonghyun had been no exception. 

Seeing him in real life proved that he was as beautiful and unreal as he looked in pictures and videos all around Alluvion; even if he’d altered his genetics to remain and look younger, which was no secret. His skin looked unwrinkled and smooth; he was supposed to be in his sixties but he looked like a twenty-year-old university student. His hair was black and a little long, however healthy and shining.

“Figure out how the code is placing the information in the file and then figure out where the information is coming from.” Choi had spoken without looking away from his screen, barely prompting a proper glance or greeting to him. Jonghyun somehow swallowed silently and slightly looked up when hundreds of codes started loading on the center of the shared screen, separating both of their faces yet still being visible to each other in a blur.

Jonghyun’s hands rested on his lap and Choi finally looked away from his screen to inspect him in person thoroughly even with the barrier of a virtual hologram in front of his face. He wordlessly loaded a virtual keyboard in his direction and stared at him unblinkingly and expectantly. Jonghyun felt intimidated only by looking back, so he retreated and stared at the keys instead.

“What is the best course of action?” Choi asked.

Jonghyun’s eyes examined the screen for a few seconds in silence. His irises were barely visible to Choi, but he saw the fervor in which he glanced through each and every line across from him. “I can trace these actions backward.” He spoke through the screen. “Start at the end.” 

Choi raised an eyebrow and paid close attention. “Don’t speak. Show me.”

Jonghyun sometimes felt like he couldn’t keep up with his brain at all. His eyes were darting all around the screen too quickly and his fingers were working on the codes as if he’d written the commands and ran them himself. It felt like he’d known the commands by muscle memory even if it was the first time he was reading them; as if they belonged to him only and Choi watched in quietness and attention. 

As soon as Jonghyun located the files and managed to review the patterns completely, he looked up and met Choi’s eyes. 

“You know, it takes twenty thousand hours for someone to become an expert in coding.”

Jonghyun stood stunned and speechless, struggling to find the right words let alone his voice. 

“I’m afraid I’m no expert. I only started coding with these kinds of conventions seven months ago, Sir.”

The screen in between them suddenly disappeared with a blink of Choi’s eyes. Jonghyun was able to look at the male in front of him properly, then. Something inside him urged him not to look away from the lion’s eyes. “Where are you studying?” He asked. “How come you know how to read and run these codes?”

“I started learning how to build pieces of software when I was fifteen. But I don’t study anywhere at the moment.”

Jonghyun worked his fingers on the same hole in his jeans from earlier and Choi stared at him in disguised admiration. “How old are you again, kid?”

“It’s Kim Jonghyun,” He replied almost inaudibly. “And I’m seventeen.”

Choi hummed and the screen popped back into place with a soft clicking sound. He read a few more details from Jonghyun’s files and whistled under his breath in concentration. Jonghyun wished he could read minds as well as he could read codes to know what he was thinking about. 

“Kim Jonghyun,” He looked back at him and realized that his dreams and life depended on that very moment. 

To have a dream life in the clouds of Polarion and become the best robotics engineer never felt so close to wishing for. An opportunity that happened decades ago, but nevertheless allowed him to build a life in the sky as he had always desired. 

“Congratulations. The internship is yours.”

—

Aaron didn’t know what time it was nor how long he’d been asleep for, but that droopy sensation was never uncommon for him. He stretched on the bed and noticed that Jonghyun’s spot was empty like usual, but the disappointment was somehow still there. He rolled his body to the abandoned side of the bed and hugged one of the pillows, eyes unblinking and roaming all over the cold room. 

The floor-to-ceiling windows on the right displayed pure black as if it were an empty LED screen wall, and he fetched the remote control on Jonghyun’s nightstand to turn it on and exhibit a busy, iridescent morning instead. It looked so real that Aaron stared out of the window for a few seconds, trying to imagine how it'd feel to live in the huge cities of Alluvion instead of the pure blue of infinite space that was Polarion. The hustling city-life and the music coming from loudspeakers downtown; people dancing on the streets and others singing in pubs and bars. Maybe life there would be like the romance novels he loved to read every time Jonghyun was downstairs working on Minhyun’s program and asked him not to interrupt.

His memory wasn’t terrible, so he knew that Jonghyun hadn't slept properly nor with him for weeks. 

Aaron got up idly from the bed. The vivid images on the window gave him false hopes of visiting Alluvion someday, but Jonghyun despised the idea for way too many reasons, so he quickly turned the vibrant projection off after secretly contemplating it for a little bit longer. 

Even with the clanging, lumbering steps as he walked down the metal stairs into the laboratory to check on Jonghyun, the other man didn’t even flinch at the noise. Jonghyun was quickly on his eyesight, and he noticed the uncomfortable position of his neck whilst he slept on top of the notes of his desk. He hesitated whether he should wake him, but the soft breathing had him reevaluating and shaking his head quietly to himself.

The laboratory was completely silent except for the constant machines beeping in the background. He turned to look at Minhyun’s synthetic body and was pleasantly surprised to find him seated on a chair rather than sprawled on the table where he’d last seen him hours ago. He also belatedly noticed that Jonghyun had secured the last couple of bolts on Minhyun’s limbs which made it possible for him to stay put. 

Aaron walked towards him and stopped when he was close enough to touch the smoothness of his left cheek. His eyelashes looked delicate against his skin and it made him think about how he only seemed to notice or pay attention to those little details now. He leaned in to study Minhyun’s face, pulling one of his eyelids up with his thumb and stroking the other along the lips. 

There was still a hole in his chest region though, where the main circuit board would go.

“Fuck.”

Aaron abruptly turned around and caught a glimpse of Jonghyun rubbing his neck roughly. There was a moment in which both of the males found themselves looking at each other in silence. Aaron left Minhyun’s side to stand directly next to his lover with a concerned gaze.

“Do you need a cup of coffee?” He put both of his hands on Jonghyun’s neck and caressed the tense muscles with his fingers. “How are you feeling?”

“Anxious,” He replied with a rasp in his tone. “Minhyun’s probably feeling nervous too.” 

“Did the data finish transferring?” Aaron asked apprehensively. “I saw it was a very heavy file last night.”

Jonghyun peeked at his screen and nodded in its direction. “One more hour to go.” 

“That’s why you’ve been keeping yourself busy?” He motioned over to the soon-to-be Minhyun’s body. The last little details and joint securing were pretty much finished already.

Jonghyun might have been responsible and essential for the technical and mechanical aspects of building Minhyun, but Aaron was really impressive at constructing Minhyun’s hardware. He had been grafting the android’s synthetic skin for the last year or so (which looked anything but synthetic, really). The skin tissues looked so real that Aaron had previously wondered where exactly Jonghyun had gotten such high-quality materials from, but rather than asking, he’d been the one to cover the metallic limbs as if it were the simplest job. Jonghyun had shown him the model though; he’d shown him the way he wanted Minhyun’s face to look, the way he was supposed to thread the black-brown hair into his scalp, and the way he wanted other tiny technicalities like the lines on his palms and the moles on his skin to appear on the surface.

He remembered about the present hole in his chest though, and it truly made Aaron a little sad; to think that Minhyun wouldn’t have a real heart. 

But he was still the first robot in human history to be built like this, wasn’t he? The first android to be capable of thinking independently and _feeling_. Jonghyun had worked extremely hard on the AI, without a doubt the most advanced and developed software installed into a machine in the entire universe. Aaron realized now that it didn’t matter if Minhyun didn’t have a heart because he would certainly act and reflect as if he owned one.

“Look at this,” Jonghyun said, rolling the chair across the lab to sit directly in front of Minhyun’s body. “I’ve already loaded the breathing simulator.” The monitors from above of the metallic showed numbers that continuously moved up as if it were counting respiratory rates. Jonghyun touched the screen and typed something before the naked chest across from him started moving on its own. Aaron looked appalled, unknowing of what to say yet settling with looking at the motion unblinkingly. 

“It looks so real.” He finally admitted, awestruck. “ _He_ looks so real…”

“And remember that he’s unique,” Jonghyun added. “He’s not like a labor bot or a pleasure bot.” He ran one of his palms over the robot’s wide chest. 

“Remember that his AI is too advanced for him to become so trivial like the ones in Alluvion. No assembly line would be capable of creating another model like him. Only I could do something so wonderfully unexcelled.”

Aaron smiled at him with fondness until it reached and filled his eyes. “Because only you can create life out of metal.” 

Jonghyun looked at Aaron and smiled with pride and perhaps affection. “Exactly, my love.”

Aaron stayed downstairs while Jonghyun went upstairs and took a bath. He made sure to mention that if the program was successfully copied and loaded, he should immediately call him to let him know even if he was half into his shower. He nodded and stayed there alone, impatiently looking at the screen of Jonghyun’s computer and counting the minutes left. 

His perception of time was easily lost because before he could even blink twice, there were only fourteen minutes left until the program launched and Jonghyun was returning to his seat with his lower lip in between his teeth.

“Oh, wow,” Aaron breathed. “He’s moving his fingers on his own right now.”

Jonghyun checked the screen of his computer for one last time. If any kind of glitch was to show at this time, it would take him hours to fix and re-download into the hard disk, so he looked critically, reading each and every code in the massive screen before finishing up and confirming the password to Minhyun’s file. Aaron read it as he typed it. His birthday.

His eyes skimmed through the software, checking the applications and components. Image recognition, speech recognition, machine learning, sentiment analysis… He stopped on the blue loading bars, making sure they were all completed before launching the program in case the software decided to give him an error minutes before Minhyun’s entire data was transferred into the new hard-drive. 

Aaron moved his chair to sit next to Jonghyun and held out his hand, putting it on his knee with an implication of support and encouragement. Jonghyun placed his left hand on top of his and after a moment moved it so that they could entwine their fingers instead. 

“Come on,” Aaron whispered quietly as his grip around Jonghyun’s fingers tightened. “Minhyun’s been waiting for this just as long as we have.”

And Jonghyun clicked on the big lettering of his screen in approbation and excitement for years of hard work; the words he’d been longing to see on his screen upon finalizing. 

The ones that felt so unreal but he clicked a confirmation almost immediately.

**_Activating Main AI NETWORK_ **

**_PROGRESS: 100%_ **

**_Main Program Loop Stable_ **

**_No errors Found_ **

**_MINHYUN.DAT STABLE_ **

**_Speech - - - OK_ **

**_Volition - - - OK_ **

**_Knowledge - - - OK_ **

**_Emotion - - - OK_ **

**_Motorium - - - OK_ **

**_UPLOADING: MINHYUN.DAT_ **

**_TRANSFERRING..._ **

**_PORTING DATA COMPLETE. DOWNLOAD AND FINISH_?**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone reading this actually studies robotics, please don't roast me for my application of science into fiction. This was hard enough heavy-research to write about. I'm just a Journalism major student and not a robotics engineer like Jonghyun, I promise. 
> 
> I greatly appreciate your comments, so please let me know what you think!
> 
> My [Twitter](https://twitter.com/dabbingminhyun)


	2. Layers of Blue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's a good day. Now have an update three months late!

|| _AVI. D-11-07_ ||

_LOG NUMBER ID0009_

_00:00-2:48_

The room was relatively silent, but the consistent beeping of a machine behind him interrupted the quietude before he broke it with an awkward cough. His fingers pushed the thick frames of his glasses further up his nose, and he blinked a few times before opening his mouth to make a proper statement. The camera in front of him made him feel less lonely despite sitting by himself.

“Uh, hello. It’s almost four in the morning,” His voice was slightly slurred, a quiet thumping of his fingers on his desk, “Aaron’s already upstairs and Minhyun is in sleep mode, but I thought about making a log and talking about the process of my… project.”

He smiled tiredly for a short second, “I was thinking about Minhyun’s purpose tonight and now I can’t sleep. I barely sleep these nights from how busy I am, but I was thinking that I could get a few thoughts out of my chest and find some relief.”

There was another long silence. He pushed his glasses up again, most likely out of habit now, and tilted his head to the right. The camera barely caught all the scattered notes on his desk and the empty mug of coffee. 

"You know how AI[1] is programmed to carry out tasks and jobs that humans can do but don’t want to do? Androids are far more efficient than humans when it comes to working. We’ve had robot labor in Alluvion for a few decades now, and as much as companies have tried creating AGI, there’s been barely any luck.”

“I’ve been devoting myself to this entire project. Every day of the week I am closer to its end and the results are so promising and never-seen-before. Minhyun isn’t a simple AI that follows orders and commands like the ones you can find roaming in the cities. The beauty of AGI[2] is the huge range of capabilities for androids. The expectations of a machine to be as intelligent as a human.”

Jonghyun cleared his throat and looked at the camera intently, “For an android to be considered ‘intelligent’, we have established requirements. Ever since we reached the automation era, millions of universities launched automaton productions. But that doesn’t mean that they’re all equally good at tasks. CyberArk were the pioneers. We created androids that had amazing deep learning software. Speech recognition, image recognition, and natural language processing have been constantly improving, but we made these robots look human.”

He looked behind him, the back of his neck visible for a few seconds until he turned around again, “But when we speak about human intelligence, we make an emphasis on the ability to reason, make strategies, solve problems, make judgments, represent our knowledge, and hundreds of other skills that androids do not have. So whenever we speak about artificial intelligence, are we only thinking about machines that are smart enough to understand a language and prepare a sandwich and coffee for a human? Their intelligence so far has been measured on how many chess games a computer can win, how many orders a machine can follow in one hour, and it’s almost laughable that this is what’s considered an intelligent machine. These machines don’t know right from wrong, don’t make their own individual decisions, don’t reason...”

Deep breath, “These machines are not yet at human-level intelligence. And the day these _intelligent machines_ embody values, make assumptions, think critically, find purposes for themselves– then _that’s_ when they’ll become more and more intelligent.”

“We will have reached superintelligence–the intelligence that is beyond a human’s–shortly after the development of artificial _general_ intelligence. AGI machines will have enormous advantages in their mental and learning capability. Imagine a being with perfect memory, endless and superior knowledge base, abilities to multitask, and understand subjects better than human beings. And I believe this is why programmers and engineers are so scared of creating this kind of machine. The fear of creating a species much more powerful than ours.”

Jonghyun looked away from the camera and laughed quietly, “No one’s been brave enough to try it out, but I have. And I think I'm closer than ever.”

—

There was a whirring sound inside the laboratory.

Jonghyun looked at Minhyun, heartbeat mad as if it were inside his throat. His lover, Aaron, also resorted to watch closely in silence and wait for Minhyun’s eyes to flutter open or simply… _move_ any of his fingers like he’d done earlier on his own. He kept checking his watch impatiently and tapped his foot on the tiles of the flooring in the lab. It was nearly fifteen minutes since they’d patched up Minhyun’s chest after adjusting the hard drive inside of his new body, and nearly ten minutes since they’d launched Minhyun’s program. 

It felt electrifying when Minhyun finally blinked his eyes, opening and closing them just as quickly, as if the light in the room had been too strong for his vision. Jonghyun's fingers twitched and he started scribbling on his notepad with intensity. 

Aaron knew better than to gasp or cheer because “ _you could shock him while he's still getting used to the new sensations,”_ and so he held his surprise in and stared openly at the robot instead. 

He waited until Minhyun’s eyes were completely open. Looked stunned to silence as he stared at everything around him over and over. The massive computers behind Jonghyun attracted his attention minutely until he was looking at the lights on the ceiling with squinted eyes. His gaze fell on his lap and he looked as if he were processing the assault of information in his system. Jonghyun was waiting until Minhyun spoke on his own, but seeing how he kept scanning the entire room and his surroundings, he momentarily feared that his speech hadn’t loaded successfully and the thought panicked him enough to grow antsy.

“Minhyun?” Aaron spoke, voice wary and eyes wavering. He might have noticed how alarmed Jonghyun looked.

It was the first time the robot was looking at them with his own eyes in his very own and new body. Minhyun stared at Aaron with perplexity, looking at his expression in silence from the way his sharp eyebrows furrowed slightly and trailing down to scan the color of his parted lips. He slowly began blinking his eyes as he stared at his clothes when he finished studying his entire appearance. 

Minhyun’s mouth opened for the first time, “Aaron?” 

Minhyun had just recognized him by differentiating between Jonghyun and Aaron’s voices without a proper introduction, the same way he knew how to do so when he was still stuck in the computer. Jonghyun sighed with relief and wrote on his notepad. Speech and image recognition were working fine so far.

“Minhyun,” Jonghyun spoke, smiling charmingly with a few of his teeth showing. “How’s your vision?” He asked slowly, as if not to startle him completely. “Are robotics working well? Could you move your fingers for me?” 

He looked slightly troubled, like a newborn animal being granted independence and expected to survive unaided in the world even though that wouldn't be the case at all. Minhyun was to stay here with them. 

He raised his left hand and his fingers loosened, going up one by one as if he were counting. He showed Jonghyun that he could control them smoothly and with no fault. Jonghyun nodded and continued writing on the notepad; Aaron looked at him with even more fascination, still shell-shocked that he was moving and blinking and talking.

“How are you feeling?” 

It was simple, but he didn’t expect a lot from his first proper thought. “Strange,” Minhyun said.

Jonghyun had made sure to insert enough knowledge on his data so that he could recognize a considerable amount of things. Things like objects and their names. He knew body parts and had average information on human behavior. He’d taught him about emotions months ago, as Aaron listened and threaded the hair on Minhyun’s soon-to-be scalp and Minhyun himself waited patiently and learned inside the computer. Jonghyun had named all the human emotions to him and clarified with pride that programming feelings on artificial intelligence had never been done before. And that was why he was significantly more extraordinary than any other robot in the entire universe.

But although Jonghyun taught him things and filled his hard drive with a lot of data, he’d purposely left certain things out like writing and reading and playing instruments. With the sole intention to track Minhyun’s learning process and journal the ability and gift of experiencing like a human.

“ _Talking_ is strange,” Minhyun added with a slight struggle. “It doesn’t feel like I need to wait for your permission to start my operating system either.”

Aaron looked in awe, moving to look at Jonghyun because he was curious too. 

He nodded at him with another smile. “You don’t have to wait ever again. You might feel like you’re not trapped inside a firewall.” He scratched the back of his neck with his pen and hummed. “Does it feel like freedom?”

The sound of Jonghyun’s voice had Minhyun listening carefully, looking like he didn’t want to miss a single syllable. He scanned his appearance the same way he’d done minutes prior with Aaron, except he focused his eyes on Jonghyun’s own, looking so much like a living person. It made Jonghyun inwardly shiver.

For a moment Minhyun thought in silence, frowning visibly and blinking as if he was lost in time.

“I don’t... I don’t know what freedom _feels_ like.” He admitted after another moment of intricate thinking. “I… I have trouble accessing that information. But is this how it feels?”

Jonghyun thought carefully, unsure of the answer he should give him. He'd learn and store anything anyone told him. No matter how significant or insignificant, Minhyun would listen to anything he or Aaron were to say to him and remember it for an inhumane amount of time. “It will take you some time to process and organize all your knowledge. But once we teach you how to read, you’ll be capable of learning anything you want.” He shook his head after a moment and re-evaluated his choice of words.

“No, not anything, but _everything_ .” He seemed more satisfied with that answer. “You can and _will_ learn everything there is to understand, Minhyun.” Without thinking about it more, he nodded in self-assurance.

With just one glance in his direction, he could notice the expression on his face. So pure and innocent and excited about life.

“Even about freedom, if you’d like.”

–

Minhyun couldn’t describe every feeling and sensation properly just yet. 

The buzz of seeing things for the first time and meeting Jonghyun and Aaron personally was still tingling in his system. It had him experiencing an overload of sentiments and reactions he’d never been aware of. All the new and foreign sights suddenly made him feel as though he was incapable of processing and filtering his thoughts all at once.

But even though he couldn’t explain every passing emotion, the steep iron stairs leading upstairs made his legs tremble with hesitation, and he knew that  _ fear  _ was a fitting description. Jonghyun sat in a stool at the far back of the laboratory and typed persistently into his computer’s keyboard, barely giving Minhyun any further examination now that he’d been up and running successfully in a body after years of hard work. 

Minhyun refrained from interrupting Jonghyun’s work because at least Aaron smiled and spoke with him in eager enthusiasm. He watched and listened, mirroring Aaron’s posture when he put both hands in his knees and occasionally blinked before replying. 

The most exciting feeling was when Aaron covered his mouth at the realization that he hadn’t seen his appearance at all yet. Aaron clasped his hands together when he pulled him up from the stool he was sitting on and informed Jonghyun briefly that they were going to the bathroom at the far back of the room. 

Minhyun didn’t have any time to expect things, so when they reached the mirror, he looked at his reflection in clear surprise. He quickly took a palm to his face and touched the skin of his cheeks and forehead, moving to pull at the black hair in his scalp and laughing quietly when Aaron met his eyes on the mirror’s reflection. 

Before he could voice his thoughts, Aaron was talking over him. He seemed so avid in speaking and it made him ecstatic because Minhyun enjoyed listening to his voice a lot too. Even before he was finished, he always enjoyed his company in the lab because he was always friendly and always had something new to say. He liked it when he shared stories or his thoughts with him; Aaron was very kind to him.

“Do you like it?”

“I… I think so?”

They stayed in the bathroom for a little longer because Minhyun kept finding new details about all the different expressions he could make. His smile was also starting to feel more natural the longer he looked at it, and eventually, when he was nearly used to his appearance, Jonghyun called them from outside and they followed his voice. 

He didn’t have a great perception of time, but he knew that it had been a very long time since they’d been in the laboratory. Jonghyun watched both of them come out of the bathroom and looked at the stairway in deep thought. 

“You should take Minhyun upstairs,” Even though Jonghyun’s voice was always familiar, it sounded a bit fatigued when he stretched his arms over his head and suggested they went ahead without him. It was barely audible, but he mentioned how he still had some notes to transfer to his computer. He smiled at them once before continuing his work.

Aaron encouraged Minhyun to go up the stairs with a smile and supportive, crinkly eyes. His limbs felt slightly foreign still, but with the help of the metallic handrail and Aaron’s firm grip, he managed to make his way upstairs slowly. The fear from earlier was long gone, and Minhyun’s movements were less clumsy with each new step he took.

The first thing Minhyun noticed as soon as he reached the last pair of stairs was that there were huge window walls covering the entire right half of the second floor. Jonghyun’s laboratory downstairs didn’t have any windows at all, and the only source of light was artificial and fluorescent because of the number of recessed luminaires and screens in every corner of the ceiling. 

He was perplexed by the newest, pristine view however, and he found himself walking closer to the glass wall in an attempt to find more. One of his palms carefully touched the glass probingly, immediately surprised at the coldness of the surface. Even though he couldn’t see it all, he saw the amounts of white fog under the shuttle. An unending illustration; just the beginning of the big, wide-open sky. 

The scenery had him entranced in his spot because he felt as if he were experiencing wonders right now as he watched from outside the closed window, but at the same time, he was aware that the view wasn’t very special nor unique at all. Everywhere he looked, it was the same. Blue layers of sky and the unknown white that covered everything under. If he craned his neck to try to see what it looked like above rather than below, it was also exactly the same color of blue unless he squinted hard enough.

_ Endless, eternal, infinite. _

He seemed to remember a piece of a conversation he had with Jonghyun a really long time ago. This must be  _ Polarion _ ;  the liveable speck in the stratosphere, nearly touching the mesosphere where the sky gradually faded into deeper hues of blue and almost blackness of outer space.

“Polarion,” Minhyun spoke aloud, filled with a tinge of uncertainty. He looked behind him and found Aaron watching him carefully, “What’s that on the bottom?”

Aaron walked closer to him and watched where he pointed. Minhyun almost forgot what he asked when he noticed Aaron’s long eyelashes flutter with each blink. “Those are clouds.” He confirmed and Minhyun’s eyes trailed insistently to look at them again. 

“And what do they feel like?” 

“I don’t know. I’ve never touched one,” Aaron admitted openly. “But even if I haven’t, I can tell you that a cloud feels like nothing very much. It’s just condensed water vapor.”

Minhyun stared at the clouds and felt severely disappointed, but his eyes quickly set on the surroundings inside the room rather than those outside. He naturally skimmed his gaze through the monochromatic furniture around him. Everything around him was either white or grey, and the only other colors in the entire room was one of the walls and Aaron’s selections of clothing.

His operating system seemed to process information and images painfully slowly, but if he was sure of something, it was that Jonghyun had made him so that the more he saw, the more he realized he  _ knew _ . He knew colors. He knew Aaron’s shirt was red and his pants were black and loose. Those things on the sides were pockets, and Aaron seemed to fiddle with them every once in a while. 

Looking back at the wall, he knew that it was painted blue. A navy kind of blue, contrasting everything else in the room and distracting him momentarily. 

“I painted that wall myself,” Aaron said as if he was aware of Minhyun’s interest in it. “Jonghyun was working on your program restlessly every day and I was bored. He brought paint from Alluvion one afternoon and it kept me busy.”

His gaze instinctively searched for eyes once again and it felt like long seconds the way he inspected Aaron’s eyebrows and blinked at his mouth. His parted lips looked wet. 

“I also painted the walls in your room,” Aaron added and shifted in his place to take Minhyun’s hands and pull at them euphorically. “Do you want to see? You also have windows upstairs, so I think you’re going to  _ love  _ it.”

The word struck his system immediately, recognizing that he couldn’t connect the emotion of  _ love  _ with anything yet. It felt almost the same as when Jonghyun had mentioned freedom to him; a concept difficult for him to understand despite being well-aware that it certainly existed. And even though the thought alarmed him for a few seconds, Minhyun impulsively smiled back and followed Aaron upstairs when he kept rambling fascinatedly.

He took him to the third floor, opening a white sliding-door with a light but impatient touch. It was the closest one to the stairway, and it was big enough to fit a bed and a desk with a swivel chair comfortably. Aaron’s fascination whilst showing him the things around was contagious, and his smile didn’t falter even when he pointed at the left wall. A massive window covered the entire wall, but rather than showing the skyline they’d seen downstairs earlier, it resembled a pitch-black screen. Aaron walked towards one of the empty shelves and picked a small device with a few buttons on it. Before he turned to show it to him, Minhyun was already walking towards him to take a proper look.

“This button allows you to see Polarion’s view,” He pressed it immediately after, and the room filled with the same blue light that flooded the room downstairs. The same clouds on the bottom too. “Jonghyun doesn’t really like to have the scenery visible when he’s upstairs. I think he doesn’t like it.”

Minhyun tilted his head to watch him instead. “Really? But I think it’s really beautiful.”

“Me too,” Aaron looked at the remote control once more and seemed hesitant for a second. He met Minhyun’s eyes and gave him the device with self-assurance, “The red button allows you to browse different views. There are actual sceneries from Alluvion, too. Like hustling cities and oceans and even rooftop views. They’re obviously fake, but the windows in the shuttle can display any image you want.” 

He pushed the button curiously and the room lit with different shades of colors. Colors he’d never seen before, flashing in the entire room like neon spotlights. The screen displayed videos now, crowds of people walking in every direction, and some holding hands. He continued pressing the button, getting a nighttime view as if they were in a tall skyscraper, visible buildings around, and lights coming from under like flashes of express trains. It looked so real that Minhyun stared at the small car silhouettes driving on the highways with intense attention. 

“Even if they’re false backgrounds, I really enjoy them.” Aaron tried sounding unaffected, but Minhyun knew that he wasn’t trying on purpose. “Polarion is so isolated from everything, so I think it’s become a bad habit to rely so much on these Alluvion fantasies.” 

Minhyun wondered if that was some kind of secret he was revealing. If the way he swayed embarrassedly to the left gave him any hints. Aaron seemed apprehensive of sharing that with him, so he took the remote and switched it to Polarion’s authentic view, blinking at it in silence.

_ You must have felt lonely _ , Minhyun thought.

His eyes couldn’t stop staring at Aaron in deep thought, “I think I would also find it reassuring, though. Polarion must feel lonely sometimes.”

“It is,” Aaron replied with honesty. His expression shifted to a slight smile, and his attempt to make their surroundings less gloomy wasn’t unrecognized, “That’s why I keep myself busy. Reading books and painting the walls of your room.”

Minhyun laughed back, telling him that he liked them very much, attaining a fulfilling smile from Aaron who simply shrugged and said it only took him a few hours in the morning. He was very excited to show him around, teaching him how to turn the lights of his room on and off, and opening drawers with clothes neatly folded in rectangles.  _ Jonghyun had donated a few clothes to him, he said. Aaron’s were apparently too small. _

“And just in case, our room is across the hall.” 

Aaron led Minhyun to the doorway of his room and pointed at an identical, white closed door at the far end of the hallway. Minhyun grew silent momentarily and couldn’t help but speak up in confusion.

“I get a room for myself?”

He nodded out of habit. “Yeah. Jonghyun and I sleep in the same room.” 

“Oh,” Minhyun hummed in understanding and assented eventually. “Okay, I understand.”

Both of them walked back to the center of Minhyun’s bedroom and Aaron contemplated the bed Jonghyun had set up for him a long time ago. Aaron sat on it and Minhyun followed soon after, eyeing the empty bedside table. It had a small lamp, and Minhyun was about to turn it on when Aaron broke the silence again.

“Jonghyun and I thought that a bed would be more comfortable for charging,” Aaron inspected Minhyun’s profile until he was met with eyes again, “How long do you have until your next charge?”

Minhyun paused and checked internally, speaking very quietly. “Two hours.”

Aaron smiled, and it looked very warm and friendly. Minhyun unconsciously kept adding more and more data about Aaron in his system, opting to smile back. He didn’t really know why, but it came out naturally now. 

“You like reading, right? You always told me stories,” Minhyun said suddenly, unsure of what prompted him to mention it. He kept remembering, however, “Sometimes you came down to the lab and talked to me about the books you were reading.”

“Oh, you remember?” Aaron laughed, tilting his head barely but fixing his gaze on Minhyun’s expression.

“I have a perfect memory.” He was purposefully teasing. “Do you have any new stories?” 

“I have hundreds,” He beamed extraordinarily. “But I can tell you one that’s not from a book I read.” He shifted further on Minhyun’s bed until his back hit the wall next to it. Minhyun automatically wanted to copy Aaron and do the same, but he eventually stayed in the same position with both feet on the carpeted floor and followed Aaron with his gaze alone, “I can tell you the story of how Jonghyun and I chose your name.”

Minhyun grinned and nodded quickly.

“For a very long time, Jonghyun didn’t know what to call you,” Aaron looked at him intently and articulated with his hands, “You know, your creation was Jonghyun’s biggest challenge, but after all, the goal was to make you humane. Alluvion androids have serial numbers as names, but you… We needed to give you a meaningful name.”

“ _ ‘Minhyun’ _ is meaningful?”

“Very much,” Aaron said with a firm nod and clap of hands, “I’m surprised Jonghyun didn’t tell you what it meant. Or that you didn’t ask.”

“I guess I never realized it was significant.”

“Yours is.” The slight pause made Minhyun check whether Aaron was thinking or at loss of words. “‘Minhyun’ means kind, affable, and brave. We chose it the night Jonghyun finished constructing the database to log your AI.”

“I remember when Jonghyun taught me how to say it.” Minhyun quietly added. 

“We hoped it’d be a good name for you.”

“And what about you? Do you know what your name means?”

He looked at him in thoughtfulness, pressed lips, and a slight head shake, “No. I don’t think it means anything at all.”

Minhyun didn’t say anything for a moment and Aaron didn’t seem to mind. He leaned his head on the wall and briefly looked lost in his thoughts. He felt guilty to interrupt his train of thoughts, but he enjoyed speaking more than silence, “I like what mine means. Thank you for choosing it.”

Aaron hummed warmly and traced the patterns in the mattress of the bed with his eyes. Minhyun stared directly ahead of them instead, finding their reflections on the thick, glass windows. He looked at his reflection and mechanically lifted one of his hands to touch his skin curiously. The paleness of his neck wasn’t entirely the same as the color in his cheeks, but the feeling of the flesh was practically the same.

He hadn’t realized that Aaron’s eyes were on him suddenly. There was a small smile on his face when Minhyun stopped touching his face, feeling embarrassed briskly. 

“Don't be embarrassed. You’re very handsome,” Aaron pointed out when Minhyun was unable to maintain eye contact with him. 

Aaron saying it now instead of letting it out earlier when Minhyun saw his reflection for the first time in the laboratory with Jonghyun made him a bit self-aware of the meaning. Shifting to look at him better when he averted his gaze, Aaron added teasingly, “I’ve seen your face like a million times already.”

“Is finding someone handsome entirely subjective?” Minhyun asked to shift the subject somewhere slightly different. He was aware that Aaron was only being kind and easygoing, but he still felt the urge to look away, unknowing of how to accept a compliment properly or how to return it as openly.

“I guess? But I’m sure you’re still handsome if we tried being objective.” 

He met Aaron’s eyes in the window’s reflection and smiled halfway. He would’ve told Aaron that he was handsome as well, but something in his system grew slightly unresponsive and sluggish. The realization that he probably had an hour left before he axiomatically ran out of battery and shut down distracted him enough to feel sullen. 

“Aaron?” His voice was faint, but he felt like speaking for as long as he could. “Jonghyun mentioned reading, and I want to learn how to read.” 

Aaron watched him with raised eyebrows and a firm nod, “Of course. I’ll tell Jonghyun. We can do that tomorrow.” 

Minhyun nodded with appreciativeness and fell into silence. He gazed as Aaron arched his back and stretched, still sitting with him idly on the bed, and turning to look around the room eventually. He turned his back to him and retrieved something from under the bed, and when he was facing him again, he held a thin cable. Wordlessly yet trustily, Aaron aided him with it and settled the cable on the small of Minhyun’s back, asking for his permission to lift his shirt up.

“This is where your charging port is,” Aaron remarked, touching the skin around it carefully and Minhyun feeling the sudden electric current on every single joint of his when he was plugged correctly. 

“You can still do things as you charge, but since this is the first time you’re charging since waking up, I think that putting you on sleep mode would be better.” 

Minhyun didn’t really have the energy to debate, so he concluded with a quick nod.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Aaron said before standing up from Minhyun’s bed and walking to the bedside table to turn the lamp off. 

Before he walked out of his bedroom, Minhyun called Aaron’s name and the other watched him from the doorway. “I wanted to say thank you. And that I think you're handsome too.” 

Aaron laughed at the abrupt revelation and nodded as if he were dealing with a young child. He didn’t always smile nor laughed showing his teeth, so Minhyun made sure to keep the memory well-stored in his memory for as long as he was able to keep it. Hesitantly, he added, “Objectively speaking.” 

Once again, he nodded with another laugh around his lips, “Of course. Thank you, Minhyun. Have a good night.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1Artificial intelligence (AI) - the simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think and mimic human actions. Any machine that exhibits traits such as learning and problem-solving. However, they do not display consciousness whatsoever. 
> 
> 2Artificial general intelligence (AGI) - the hypothetical intelligence of a machine that has the capacity to understand and feel like a human being. (They have sentience and make their own decisions.) Also referred to as “strong AI” and can experience consciousness/have emotions. AGI would be capable of self-improvement and lead to artificial superintelligence. 
> 
> (AO3 HTML is a nightmare.)


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